The Right Organizing Tools

The following comes from Robert Lynch on the Yahoo! Group TheNowHabit, quoted by permission. Robert is talking about tools for time management - planning and organizing our work, specifically using the GTD (Getting Things Done) approach - but his words could apply to all the tools we use to get organized.

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When we have the right tools and supplies, the things we want to do are easier and more enjoyable.

One of David Allen's small points is that the tools we use to maintain our GTD systems should be enjoyable. I collect fountain pens, so my system is mostly paper-based -- otherwise I can't use my pens!

Whatever methods we use to plan and organize our work in order to get things done, we should try to make those methods easy and enjoyable. Do you like playing with spreadsheets? Do your planning in Excel. Do you like playing with Post-It notes? Plan with them. Do you like seeing everything at once on a whiteboard? Plan on a whiteboard.

There is no single implementation that is going to work for everyone, because we are all different. Find out what can make a system interesting for you, and run with it.